Yated Ne'eman, the daily newspaper of the Degel HaTorah party, published a sharply worded editorial on Tuesday rejecting pressure from the right-wing bloc and declaring that the chareidi public belongs to no political camp.
"We are not right! Not right and not left! We are da'as Torah!" the editorial declared under the headline "We're Not Looking for a Political Home, the Only Home Is the Beit Midrash!"
The editorial was a response to what it described as a threatening "warning" sent last week to the chareidi parties by the office of the head of the right-wing bloc, an apparent reference to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to the paper, the message said that if the draft law is not settled before an alternative government is formed, the chareidi parties would not be able to return to the right-wing bloc.
Yated called the warning hypocritical and outrageous, and said it was a patronizing attempt to treat the chareidi public as private property in one bloc's pocket. It asked when the chareidi public ever became an inseparable part of the right-wing bloc. It also asked when chareidim agreed to let a secular political bloc use the Torah world for its own needs, especially one that had long dealt with them by taking without giving and promising without delivering.
The paper said the chareidi parties had sided with the right in the past not because they are right-wing, but because the Israeli left has a clear and consistent agenda of removing Torah from Jewish life. When yeshiva students needed protection, however, the paper said the right proved no better than the left, calling it "a false right." It recalled that it was Likud lawmakers who torpedoed the draft bill in the previous Knesset. It accused some Likud and national-religious MKs of reviling yeshiva students and applauding measures against them.
The editorial invoked the biblical story of Jephthah, whom the elders of Gilead drove out and then begged to lead them when they were in trouble. Citing the classic commentators, the paper argued that the enmity had not changed and that the right was coming to the chareidim only out of necessity.
The change bloc did not escape criticism either. Yated described its years-long campaign on the draft issue as "vile" and built on incitement and demonization of Torah scholars. It said the campaign's only real goal was to break the right-wing bloc and bring down the government. The paper said the chareidi parties were never a "bloc" with either side.
At the same time, the editorial stressed that nothing has been decided. It said the final decision on how to protect Torah scholars will be made solely by Rabbi Dov Landau, Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch and the leading rabbis, and not in response to threats.
It closed with a direct message to its critics on the right: "Don't threaten, don't preach, and we owe you no explanation." It said the chareidi public is not anyone's political pawn and has "one home only, the beit midrash."
The editorial follows Degel HaTorah's decision not to recommend any candidate to President Isaac Herzog to form the next government. Kikar HaShabbat commentator Yishai Cohen told Channel 12 that the editorial was Degel HaTorah's response to attacks from Channel 14, and that it prepares the ground for a possible government made up of the change bloc and the chareidi parties.
